Passion and Death
by Flatlander Jr
Summary: Passion missing scene. Willow remembers what it's like to die.


PASSION AND DEATH

DANIELLE FRANCES DUCREST

Disclaimer: _Buffy the Vampire Slayer _belongs to Joss Whedon, Marti Noxon, Mutant Enemy, Twentieth Century Fox Productions, UPN, Kuzui Enterprises and Sanddollar Television. Any copyright infringements were not intended. This story was written for entertainment and not for profit.

Spoilers and Timing: Takes place during "Passion" with spoilers for that and "Halloween".

Summary: "Passion" missing scene. Willow remembers what it's like to die.

Update: This story has been updated because a reviewer (Ligia Elena, this means you) pointed out something wrong about Buffy's reaction to the talk she has with Willow. I realized she was right, so I went back and changed it a little. Thanks Ligia!

Willow Rosenburg reached up with a shaky hand and pressed down on the handle. The toilet flushed, taking away in a swirl of water all evidence of the dinner she'd had only an hour earlier. At any other time, she would have been appalled at the sight, but not then. Her thoughts were focused on what she'd found in an envelope in her room. She'd rather look at her own puke then look behind her at the strung-together dead bodies of her goldfish.

The thought of her precious fish made her dry-heave into the toilet bowl. Her entire body was shaking, both from throwing up and from nerves. Hot tears streamed down her face. They felt stinging thanks to the air conditioning blowing a chilling breeze into the bathroom. Willow leaned back away from the bowl as she was wracked by sobs. Behind her, from the place she'd dropped it on her hasty rush to the bathroom, she could hear a dial tone echoing from the cordless phone. Willow had been talking to Buffy when she'd discovered the fish; no doubt, Buffy assumed the worst and was rushing over. Willow would wait for her from her position on the floor. She didn't think she could get up anyway.

All of her fish, dead. Dead because a psycho-maniac vampire, whom she'd invited into her home prior to him turning back to his psychotic ways, had come into her room and killed her goldfish, then left them for her to find. It was probably the vampire equivalent of a birthday gift. Angelus was probably getting a kick out of seeing her terrified and shaking on the bathroom floor.

Terror overrode her shock. Willow whirled toward the window on a sudden burst of adrenaline. She peered out but couldn't see anything. Was Angelus out there, watching? The thought made her tremble more. She was in no condition to face him, to act brave. Was he laughing at her from his secure position in the shadows?

Willow's lips curled into a snarl. She grabbed the closet object she could reach, which happened to be the phone. Shouting, she threw it at the window. The phone broke on impact and dropped in pieces into the bathroom sink. The glass, for its part, stayed intact, though it now sported a dent near its center. At least, if Angelus was watching, his view would be distorted now.

Willow felt a headache coming on from all the crying, but she couldn't stop_. How dare he?_ she thought. _How dare he do that to me?_ Angel never would have dreamed of doing something so horrible, not after what had happened to her only last October. Not after the time he'd come to her bedroom window to ask for help looking for information on something, only to find her in the throes of a nightmare. This proved to her more than anything else that Angel didn't exist anymore. Only a monster would have done this.

That night when Angel had come to her bedroom window, Willow had been dreaming of the previous Halloween, when Ethan Rayne's spell had caused half of Sunnydale to be possessed by their costumes. Xander had become a soldier in the US Army. Buffy had become an eighteenth-century noblewoman.

Willow had become a ghost.

She hadn't give it much thought immediately after the fact; she couldn't afford to, not with kid-sized demons and other assorted nasties running havoc on the streets of Sunnydale thanks to Ethan's spell. Neither Buffy nor Xander had remembered who they were, which meant neither of them were much help. Willow wasn't much help, either; she'd retained her memory, but she was now a ghost, which meant it was impossible for her to do any physical intervening. Thankfully, with help from Angel, Giles, and surprisingly, Cordelia, the spell had been broken and life returned to normal for all of them. Buffy was once more Buffy Summers, Slayer Extraordinaire. Xander was Xander again, and Willow was yanked back into her body.

It wasn't until later that night, when Willow was asleep in her bed, that she had the first nightmare. Dying hadn't been pleasant; not even a supernatural, temporary death. Willow had almost managed to block it out of her memory but her subconscious brought it all back in her dreams.

Dying was horrible. Willow had been terrified. She'd felt like she was choking, like the life was being squeezed out of her. _No_, she amended silently. _It had been worse._

Willow had tried to forget all about it. Every time she woke up gasping from another nightmare, she'd remind herself that she was still very much alive and very much not a ghost. She'd stare herself down in the mirror and tell her reflection to stop looking so pasty. Then, when she had worked up enough confidence, she would go downstairs and face her parents, who didn't notice either way anyway. By the time she got to school every day, she would once again be her normal, chirpy, Willowy self.

She'd tried talking about it with Buffy once. Her friend had been concerned, but she hadn't understood. Buffy may have died once, but she'd dealt with her experience months before. Buffy hadn't been ready to revisit them. She'd tried, really put an effort into it, but it was just too painful for her. So Willow didn't try again. Instead, she decided to follow Buffy's example and bury that experience as far back in her mind as possible. She wasn't ready to face it, either.

It wasn't that she'd discovered her own mortality. She'd known just how mortal she was since the night she found out vampires existed, when a group of the Master's lackeys had nearly had her for dinner. She'd feared death since then, and she felt with conviction that she didn't want to die. Not when she was only sixteen years old and hadn't even opened up the multi-million dollar computer software corporation she'd dreamed about since she learned how to type. No, what she wanted to shut out was the experience of actually dying. She wasn't prepared to face that again until she was at least ninety-eight years old and lying on her deathbed surrounded by her great-grandchildren.

The only person she'd really, truly talked to about it was Angel, that night when he'd come to her room and woken her from her nightmare. They hadn't said much on the subject. Willow had preferred to focus on the information Angel had wanted her to acquire than on her nightmare. Still, she'd known that he understood, really and truly, what she was going through. He'd died himself, and he'd seen plenty of people die over the years - most of them at his hands, true, but still - to know how horrifying it could be, and he was willing to talk about it. It had helped her to know that someone could sympathize.

Willow had tried and tried to forget that Halloween. More than half a year had passed. She'd finally stopped having nightmares. She'd thought she'd finally gotten passed it. Then Angelus decided it would be simply delightful to kill her goldfish and leave them strung up like a garland for her to find. It was a message that she got loud and clear. Not only could he get into her house, but he could also get under her skin and torment her with the memory of the worst night of her life. Her body trembled even worse as she remembered, again, what it had been like to die. She wished the memory would just go away.

THE END


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